why do source rpms have "prep" dependencies?

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2007, Frank Cox wrote:

> On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:47:33 -0400 (EDT)
> "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> > if someone wants to simply RTFS, it's a bit disconcerting to learn
> > that you need to download another five source rpms to do it.
>
> I don't know if this is useful in your situation, but I'm pretty
> sure File Roller can "look inside" of srpm files and extract the
> contents for you as desired.

that might come in handy, but it still doesn't solve the fundamental
problem of why a source rpm's "BuildRequires" value should affect the
simple tarball extraction and patch application operation.

just for fun, i edited mkinitrd's spec file and deleted all the
"BuildRequires" lines, and the build prep worked just fine, so i'm
convinced that a simple prep should be possible without taking the
BuildRequires dependencies into account.  now i just want an option
that implements that.

well ... what are you just sitting there for?  get to work.  :-)

rday
-- 
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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